Holding space for native art and community 🪶 Kalyn Fay Barnoski, Philbrook Museum of Art

We live in a time of increasing visibility and expansion of Indigenous creative practice. Museums and institutions are rethinking their histories, collections, and inclusivity. Art by Native artists is exploding, and Indigenous curators finally have a seat at the table in deciding who gets to be seen, where, and how. Things are opening up in the art world, and yet all I can think about is the pressure. The pressure curators must feel as the gatekeepers to a world that's still unfolding for mainstream audiences. What does this responsibility feel like? How does one begin to curate from such a vast universe of art and artists? What happens when the job also means retelling history? And what's the importance that the land a museum sits on when thinking about curation? That's today's episode. Welcome to the Art of Curation, the show from Flipboard that explores the role of human taste in a tech-driven world. Each episode, we talk to someone who's an expert in finding signal in the noise, people who do this for a living in media, tech, fashion, music, and more. I'm your host, Mia Qualirello. Like you, I get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content out there. I crave authentic people to guide me in making smart choices that make my life better, people with taste, the real kind. My guest today is Kaelin Faye Barnoski, an Indigenous interdisciplinary artist, musician, curator, and educator from Oklahoma. Kaelin is a Cherokee nation in Roli and of Muskogee Creek descent. They are also the assistant curator of Native Art at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm so excited for you to hear Kaelin's perspective. So Kaelin, since this is the first time we're talking, I stalked you on the internet. Please just tell me a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so my name is Kaelin Faye Barnoski. I'm Cherokee Nation enrolled in Muskogee Creek descent. I come from Oklahoma all over in many rural city, rural towns all over Oklahoma. And I got into curation really by way of visual and studio art. I perform music. I am a visual artist and I am the curator of Native Art at Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I love your art. It's so cool. Can you tell me a little bit about your style and your philosophy there? Yeah, absolutely. So while I was in school, I was making a lot of very serious artwork. And when you're in school, I think a lot of people coming from a other perspective or seen as sort of a minority, people want you to really make work that stems from trauma and painful situations. And I kind of fell into that. And then I realized I really wanted to be making joyful artwork that really reflects my culture and my community more. And I got to work with an Eastern Band Cherokee basket weaver. Her name was Shem Goshorn and she passed away a few years ago. She was one of my mentors for my first graduate school program. She just had some really incredible things to say about the importance of weaving and what basketry can do. There's an anecdote in which she was talking about her double wall Cherokee basket. And the way in which she wove is she used paper strips that was cut up like broken treaties and images from boarding school. And so some really difficult subject matter. And when someone asked her why she wore limited baskets, she said it's easier to receive a hard message once you've already leaned into something. And that was sort of this gateway for me and to recognizing why I wanted to be making the work I wanted to make is I wanted to help people lean into hard messages and lean into other understandings of the world. So the work that I make is inspired by Shan and this flat woven basketry. And I do 2D work, so I don't do 3D work, but it's all in the shape of different dancers at powwows and thinking about regalia and the importance of the regalia and how each bead or each object or material that's on regalia is embedded with a prayer or embedded with a good thought for the person wearing it. And so as I'm doing these weavings I'm thinking about praying for people or thinking about people or hoping for you know the good in humanity as I do each like each weave of the paper. And that's sort of what's embedded with for me. And how does your life as an artist impact your perspective as a curator? My perspective as a curator is deeply deeply influenced by being an artist myself because I want to make sure artists are represented well in the space that their perspective is platformed in this space as opposed to you know doing this sort of like singular assessing of a work and putting what I think is out there but really talking to artists especially contemporary artists talking to community being part of that community. I think artists are incredible researchers and incredible purveyors of knowledge and if we just talk to them then we have the opportunity to present that sort of research and knowledge they've dedicated their lives to. And yeah I'm just really like artists centered in my practice. I think one of my most burning questions is about the responsibility that I imagine you must feel for surfacing and putting into context a long marginalized culture that's that's so diverse. And this is such a big and courageous task to take this on so I'm not even sure where to begin but maybe we can begin with that sense of responsibility. Do you do feel that? Absolutely. I was just a part of a panel at the Santa Fe Indian art market through First Americans magazine and there were about four FEM and queer curators from Indigenous backgrounds and we all had this conversation about what makes us different sort of from other curators and it is this responsibility to community and to culture is that whatever we're doing we're doing on the shoulders of our ancestors and we're doing for generations to come thinking a lot about the idea of seven generations so whatever we do presently has to honor seven generations before us whatever we do presently has to honor seven generations in front of us. If you are close to community you are so accountable to that community you're so accountable to your family your friends there's just constantly that responsibility aspect of making sure we're maintaining good relationship and reciprocal relationships with not only our own Native communities but the Native communities that we serve and the positions that we hold. So when you think about the actual artifacts that you're curating like what kinds of things do you keep in your head and in your heart as you bring Native art and culture to mainstream audiences? Yeah so I curate both contemporary Native objects and then Philbrook Museum of Art has a collection of historical Native artworks too. So as I am working with these objects I think very I think a lot about the object as a living being and I think that is you know vastly different than it has been in most museums historically speaking as these are objects that are to be placed on the wall they aren't they're just objects you know for us to be entertained by in some way and coming from a Native perspective these objects are living they need to be caretaken they need to be touched they need to have songs and ceremonies around them and so I think when it comes to curating the specific objects I'm thinking of them as kin as living beings that deserve the same respect as another human being does as any other living object does and so what I can do to support that and for a lot of that you know this questioning around it that means that I need to be bringing community in to be working with those objects to be touching and loving on those objects again and really have a large role in what we present and how we present it. What does that look like really tactically both in the museum and in your relationships with the community? Yeah I think you know as a museum does it occasionally falls into this trap of we need to invite people in but they don't always think about the reciprocity aspect of it and that means going out into the community spending time with them investing in them in different ways and not just assuming what the needs are of the community but really asking and engaging in a way that you're able to give people with what they need and what they want. As far as what that looks like logistically here so something that we were able to do recently was we hold at the museum some of the big house ceremony objects so some of the posts from the Delaware Lenape tribe it's from their last house in Copan, Oklahoma and we just care to take the objects for them we don't own the objects you know they're theirs whenever they want to take them back but in the meantime we're taking care of them until they can find a place to put them but we were able to you know they contact us when people are around or when they're pow wow or dances are coming up and you know people want to visit these objects with Missingua on it and they came in this was just a few months ago but they were able to come in at a little delegation of Delaware people and pray around the objects do ceremony and songs with some of the prayer sticks that we have of theirs and really like engage with these objects in a way that they don't always get engaged with we also learn so much when we do this kind of stuff because we're able to document exactly what the needs are from various perspectives for these objects you know so that means you know this post needs to be turned north and it was turned south you know because that's respectful to the object you know something else that happened during this time was we pulled out some of the moccasins that have a very specific type of ribbon work on them and you know this one of the Delaware members is a maker and he had never seen these this type of ribbon work or hadn't able to document how it was done so he was able to really get a hands-on understanding of you know what his ancestors had made so he could continue that practice forward what's something you think people don't get right about native art and culture that you hope to address in your work I think something that doesn't always get done right specifically around native art is that people just want to think of us as like a past when we are very much a present and a future and so even in the didactics within museums you know they speak of us you know as this sort of stereotypical native from like the 1800s you know at the at the age of discovery the man during manifest destiny and it's that's just not how we are and also that we're like a sad we're a sad group of people because all of this bad stuff has happened you know and it's the fault of the government it's the fault of you know the people who came settlers who came in and really we aren't sad and we aren't just you know constantly swimming and trauma you know we're really joyful people where we laugh we like to joke and I think making sure that the way we present the work is reflective of these really expansive and nuanced understandings that we can hold pain but we can also hold a lot of love and joy and happiness and I don't always think that museums do a great job of reflecting that in the way we're presenting the work it's always like very stoic or cold and I just hope that in the future that changes the ways in which we present our artwork and when you talk about the past I imagine that your work is also about retelling history what is what does that responsibility feel like that one is a really heavy responsibility to be retelling history especially at this point of time you know there's so much dissension amongst the country there's dissension amongst the world and so to be retelling these histories is like a delicate thing to be doing especially in Oklahoma where there is a lot of legislation and a lot of leadership that is against you know indigenous sovereignty in this state I believe it's a heavy responsibility because not only you know these difficult situations surrounding it but because there's so many different perspectives to be told and there's only so much tech space there's only so much time and bandwidth a singular person can do it with you know that there's only so much time I can personally invest in retelling these stories so it's really about getting investment from the rest of your the rest of the institution so really having buy-in from you know top to bottom leadership down everyone recognizes that this is a story that needs to be retold um it's also about meeting with the community finding those stories um because again like if you look back even at let's see so the battle of little bighorn we have a muslin of that in our uh collection of a drawing by steven standing bear and even that story you know people understand it as general custard came in he was defeated by the Lakota Cheyenne Rappahoe people um because they banded together to defeat him over the black hills um but even within that story there's so many other stories and so many perspectives that are so built from different cultural understandings so it's really about working hard to be as expansive as possible talking to as many people as possible and just recognizing that history is not um set in stone history is this thing that um can change and can be adapted and is adaptable to like various perspectives so it's about what perspective you need to be presenting in that space what perspective means be platformed at this point in 2023 do you think most museums recognize this importance you know um I think we are definitely like as a field we are on our way and we are on that path working towards that um but museums or bureaucratic spaces they're held together by many different opinions um and funded in a bunch of different ways and everybody is uh all these spaces have to not only deal with these sorts of issues but funding and uh legislation issues too so it moves a lot slower because it's bureaucratic but I do see it moving in the way in which it needs to move what do you think other museums can learn from the philbrook I mean there's a bunch of different ways in which another institution or the field could learn from philbrook I believe that you know our native collection was one of the first collections that we actually held at the museum um we also had the Indian annual that spanned from 1947 until I think 1978 um in which we had contemporary native artists of the time be a part of a juried show and we would collect work from that show so we actually hold an incredible amount of modern native artwork um and just making sure I think as we move into the future and what people can learn from situations like that that philbrook has already done is that we just hold space we hold space for the things the community needs we hold space for these opportunities to engage with other native artists and building this like hub of native interaction because that can only build that can only build really beautiful and strong artwork as they move forward so I think just supporting spaces for native people to be themselves and to be together and to be with this artwork is what I think people can probably glean from philbrook and how do you or the museum think about the importance of the land the museum sits on when you're doing your job as a curator that is a really great question so um philbrook is sits atop 25 around 25 acres of muskogee allotment land and one of our other curators Susan Green who works at philbrook museum of art has done a lot of research around the allotment process specifically for this land that we sit on you know how it came to us who's the family that used to own it and I believe that she's done an incredible job of doing this research being really careful and while a lot of allotment spaces especially in Oklahoma there is um they they have come into they come into the hands of people through like very tumultuous ways um I believe that uh from her research that thankfully philbrook did not come into anyone's ownership through anything like nefarious which is great um but we are working with a group called the Lucinda Hickory Research Institute we've been working with them for over a year now and we've done some presentations about the land that we sit on presentations about allotment land generally but something that we do here specifically that I really do like is that instead of creating a land acknowledgement um that's like carved in stone and put on our building you know um again we recognize that that land acknowledgement isn't just enough for everyone and also it needs to be constantly ready to be adapted and changed so we do have it up in the museum we have it on our website but it's in a way that it's welcome to change it's welcome to other opinions other input advice consultation other perspectives and I think that's something you know that philbrook just does well is that we keep ourselves open to change and we keep ourselves open to being able to adapt to new knowledges we may we may gain you know what do you think other curators can learn from you that's a hard question um oh wow I think I don't know even how to answer that um I don't know how much other curators can learn from me because I feel like I'm still learning so much constantly and maybe that is the thing that people could learn is that we stay open and we stay honest about what we know and what we don't know we stay curious um and respectful um I'm not sure even how to answer how people could learn from me I think one of the most important things I hold for myself is that I make sure that I honor all the parts of myself that I need to honor um and that means staying uh staying active in my all my practices and all my research so not ever focusing on a singular but focusing on a plural thinking about art making music making curatorial work what it means to be a good sister what it means to be a good um friend or a daughter you know there's so many different aspects and I think it's easy in a western mindset to sort of compartmentalize and focus on a singular and that's what we're taught from a really young age but I think specifically in like Cherokee perspective we have we stay curious we learn a lot of things and we learn how to do a lot of things not because we're trying to be the best of anything but because it's important to know how to do those things and it's important to honor the parts of yourselves that are capable and able to do those things um so I think probably that would be the the thing that you could learn is that um you don't have to be the best you just have to constantly be learning and trying I'm really curious like who are some indigenous creatives you think more people should know I mean there are so many um I was just able as far as indigenous creatives that have been really inspiring to me recently I think about Kelly Mashburn she's Osage she's um does video and sound work um she's out of Pajasca, Oklahoma and when I think of Lydia Cheshawalla she's also Osage and a dear friend and she is out of Chicago currently she's been in a few different spaces she's just making really interesting work um and then people like Suzanne Kite who is better known as Kite I believe she's up in Hudson Valley now but she's an incredible sound artist and performance artist and I just feel like there you know something that happens a lot in any sort of um genre of art making is people get really focused on like a select few like you know the top five or top ten and don't always um take the time to invest in investigating what else is out there and there's so many native artists who are just doing making and creating incredible work and I'm just so excited about not only the generation now but the generation to come because there's so many people who are you know 10 years younger than me who I'm just blown away by even I'm thinking about like Jordan and Craig she just had an opening at Hales Gallery in New York and her work is so beautiful and is just as valid and just as important and as any work happening in any gallery right now she's pulling from Cheyenne text styles and this geometric visual language and I don't know there's so many I could list and I'd love to list oh Hayley Greenfather she's painting a mural down the street right now incredible painter muralist I don't there's so many I don't even know if I could list all of them but they're all really exciting yeah when you think about the future and I'm glad you brought that up what excites you and what work do you think still needs to be done I think the most exciting thing for me about what's to come with native artists and what's here's what people are starting to see right now which makes me really excited is just a complete ownership and autonomy of the story that they want to tell and in the way in which they want to tell it and a lack of pandering that might have happened in the past about like what is perceived as native art and what isn't native art but a reclamation of as a native person whatever artwork you make is technically native art because you are a native artist and you don't have to make it look a specific way or mean a specific thing you are a native artist you're making native art as well as contemporary work and I'm just really excited about people just not pandering to what they think needs to be made to be a popular or sellable but making things solely because this is what they want to be making and they're excited to make it I'd love to learn more about your own creative process and you talked about making time for it as part of the way you live in the world what does your practice look like and how do you find time for creativity yeah so you know I have my day job and I carry artwork during the day it's usually like weekends and evenings when I make time to do anything else but it just means researching reading a lot being with community going out to land going out to waters are a really important aspect for me specifically for Cherokee culture going to water is important for a lot of different tribes but it's always been important for me and my family and just making sure I'm spending time being like really present and understanding myself and relationship to living beings as opposed to my relationship to an institution and I think whatever creative practice that like evolves into is whatever I do you know so some days it's visual art some days I'll be drawing or weaving and some days it's music some days I just want to play guitar write a new you know write something new some sort of sound bit um sometimes some days is just writing but I think just doing something and staying curious is the way in which I'm maintaining my creative practice outside of work. Can you tell me about a specific exhibit that you're really proud of or a specific artifact in the collection as a whole that you really love? Probably one of my favorite works of the museum right now is a work by Emmy Whitehorse and we just acquired it a few I guess it was last year that we acquired it but Emmy Whitehorse is a contemporary of Jean-Quick Dissie Smith and she was part of the Gray Canyon painting group and I just love her work because she's pulling from totally a denay perspective she's from New Mexico and this idea of hojo which is you know kind of hard to explain but it's this like balance and equity between things and understanding that there's a balance between all living things and how to maintain that balance but not only like personally but visually but the work that we have is really gorgeous and speaks to abstraction and this history of abstraction and is pulling from a really deep scientific history spanning you know the mesozoic era up to the present day and you know when you see it you might not always recognize that that's what she's pulling from but that is what she's pulling from and I just like love the reason I love that work is because it's not only just beautiful and a striking piece and there's so much depth to it but she's also doing so much expansive like connecting and interweaving of indigenous understandings with these like scientific western perspectives and helping people recognize the interconnected nature of both of them I went to see Jean quick to see exhibit at the Whitney this summer I loved it so much I actually bought the book I just want more so I love to hear your recommendations about other artists to check out yeah I mean there's a book that just came out by Jeffrey Gibson and it's called an indigenous present and it's incredible there's not a lot of like contextualizing information within the book but it is a collection of contemporary native artists and as a great it's a great starting point for people who might not know a lot of native artists that are existing right now to just like jump in and visually start building relationships with the artworks so I would definitely recommend that as like a starting point it's really amazing that this has come out because I don't think that there's ever been anything quite as expansive as this specific book and helping people and representing like what's happening right now in native art I think if you're wanting to learn more about like research around native artworks I would definitely look up Nancy Mythlow Nancy Mythlow is the person you want to read she is incredible incredible author researcher scholar specifically around native art and its display how you perceive it what it represents you know there's so many different ways to engage from a curatorial's perspective and she has a great job about expanding upon that as far as like more artists I mean Chinupa, Hanska Luger is like so good so keen wonderful artists again another incredible researcher Nicholas Golanan, Suzanne Kite who I've already mentioned I just think she is also incredibly intelligent just finished her PhD and she's just she's got it going Mikaela Patton is a younger artist I think who is doing incredible work and making work that I have actually never seen and that's sort of hard to do and I think a lot of people are really impressed with her right now and then people like Warren real writer who just accepted the Tulsa Artist Fellowship so he'll start that this year Nathan Young another sound artist obviously I really like sound art and performance art but yeah there's just so many to start looking at but if you want to think more about how to understand native art I would definitely look to Nancy Mythlow Caitlin how have you evolved as a curator since beginning this role? Oh wow that's a good question you know I fell into curation I think a lot of native artists or native curators probably say the same thing is that we like sort of fell into this as opposed to knew that we were going to be doing this and I've changed so much I think I've got a different type of patience now and an understanding for what it means to be a curator specifically holding space in a museum I think as far as being a native curator in general I believe I just have an even deeper understanding of what it means to be accountable to be accountable to your community to be accountable to people just generally and um man really taking the time to build long sustainable relationships with people which is something you know I was taught and already knew but recognizing how important that is not only for myself personally but within a museum and a museum structure and I think recognizing the importance of I don't know the right word but probably like social capital or social currency in a specific space being a good friend being a good colleague in these spaces and learning how to build long-term relationships across departments and across institutions so that people are able to work together to you know add to the well of knowledge to build the best exhibitions we can build to build the best knowledge bases that we can that's something I've definitely learned over my time so far and I know I have so much more to learn and will continue learning constantly you've already given so many great recommendations about artists to check out and and books to read are there any other recommendations you can make for us books movies podcasts games places to go things to see and do that you think others should check out because you just love them so much so something I would check out for sure is native futures uh or center for native futures it's in Chicago um it started by Debra Yavlopapan um and I think that they're going to do some incredible things in the next few years um I mean they're already making waves and they just opened up and then um New Red Order I believe that uh they were just featured in an exhibition by the Forge uh curator director I think that's I'm not sure exactly what her position is I she's either the chief curator or the director but either way it's Candace Hopkins and she's an incredible curator and curated um an exhibition about a native theater um that incorporated their work um as far as that I mean just keep an eye out generally there's so many people doing incredible things uh artists from so many different generations right now um all working together working seamlessly together um collaborating um I just I'm just really excited about native art as a whole especially in this in the year 2023 right now if you want to connect with Kaylin you can contact them through their website at Kaylin Barnoski.com that's K-A-L-Y-N-B-A-R-N-O-S-K-I.com they're also on Instagram at Kaylin Barnoski we've put links to everything Kaylin's recommended in the flipboard storyboard that you'll find in this show's notes. A big thank you to our audio editor Ann Leigh. If you want to find out more about flipboard or enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests download the app or head over to our website at flipboard.com anyone can be a curator on flipboard simply create an account and start flipping to share your ideas with the world